Examination of Witnesses (Questions 580
- 588)
TUESDAY 17 JUNE 2003
THE RT
HON OLIVER
LETWIN MP
Q580 Mrs Dean: You would send torture
victims and minors overseas to one of these camps?
Mr Letwin: Yes. As I say, I think
it would be the case that a large number of people who are refugees,
either coming under the top-up arrangement or who are seeking
asylum here and going through the processing, would be victims
of torture because that is one of the principal causes of people
being refugees under the 1951 Convention. Torture victims are
not, so to speak, a separate category, they are a large part of
the genuinely persecuted people, unfortunately.
Q581 Mrs Dean: How will you ensure
that asylum seekers in the overseas camps have adequate access
to legal representation?
Mr Letwin: I resist the word "camp",
incidentally. It is a processing centre and it is important that
it should be seen as such.
Q582 David Winnick: They will soon
be known as camps. They are bound to be so. Everyone will refer
to them as camps.
Mr Letwin: All right. I hope they
will not. I hope they will not look or feel like camps. Maybe.
It is essential that we organise them in the same way that the
Home Secretary is proposing to organise his accommodation centres.
I have argued that the accommodation centres should have present
in them all the relevant facilities. Most are now to be provided
under the Home Secretary's proposals. Essentially, what I am conceiving
is exactly that somewhere else, with legal representation present,
with decision-makers present, with medics present, with proper
facilities for education and with adjudicators present with access
to the British courts for judicial review. That is an integral
component of the thing working.
Q583 Mrs Dean: Effectively we will
have British courts abroad?
Mr Letwin: Effectively, yes. Whether
they are literally, physically abroad or not, in the case of the
court, is an interesting and open question which we are currently
examining. My instinct is that they would need to be literally
abroad, yes.
Q584 Mr Prosser: Mr Letwin, we all
agree that the numbers of genuine asylum seekers are totally unpredictable,
according to world affairs. In your system how would you actually
deal with the situation whereby the number of real, genuine deserving
cases far exceeds your quota? You have talked about shifting them
to the next year but is it really fair or acceptable to keep people
in what you have described as unattractive areas for long periods
without any work or employment?
Mr Letwin: No, I think that if
the numbers of people—which is what your question implies—in
a given year arriving in this country and applying for asylum
and who, following offshore processing, were found to have well-founded
claims exceeded the quota, it would be necessary to raise the
quota. I do not envisage that as often likely to occur. I think
it is likely that with the sort of numbers I am talking about
it will be the reverse case and there will be plenty of opportunity
to top-up the quota from people we seek, but if it were to occur
I think the quota would need to change.
Q585 Mr Prosser: It is a variable
quota?
Mr Letwin: I think one has to,
as I mentioned at an earlier stage of the proceedings, envisage
the quota as dynamic rather than static.
Q586 Mr Prosser: Finally, on the
question of border security, you have talked about our present
system being extremely lax. Did you make those remarks before
the recent change in security and border controls? What grounds
have you got for saying it is so lax at the moment?
Mr Letwin: I think there have
been improvements. You are probably in as good a position as anyone
in the United Kingdom to see them at work because the major ports
have been significantly improved, I think. As you will be very
well aware, it is still on a survey basis, for example, that detection
is going on rather than systematically and universally, but it
is much better than it was. The minor ports, I fear, are not in
the same position, and the evidence for that, as usual, is much
more powerful anecdotally and by particular example than any set
of statistics because, inevitably, the statistics do not capture
what does not get captured. However, recently a group of journalists
made their way into the United Kingdom through one of our minor
ports and discovered there was literally nobody present at all.
Many of our aerodromes are entirely unpoliced. These are matters
of anecdotal fact. I have the very strong impression, from a number
of other anecdotes, that when people have been discovered as clandestines
there are frequently less than enthusiastic efforts to continue
to pursue them. As I say, I do not say this as a criticism of
the people in those agencies that are responsible because I think
I might be tempted to think in the same way, if I was them, because
if the system is not working it is very difficult to stir yourself
to engage in a whole series of actions which you have been led
to believe by popular anecdote are not going to result in anything
much at the end of the day. What I am trying to say is I do not
think that—although the Home Secretary may well make further
moves to improve border security and I applaud them—it is
likely that there will ever really be serious attention to that
until and unless we have an asylum system that is operating and
there is not a way round the immigration controls, so that people
really feel as a cultural matter that it is worth controlling
the ports. I think the Channel Tunnel and both sides of it are
an exception to that, where I think security there really has
been very significantly enhanced, and, I may say, it has been
a rather successful effort. I have congratulated the Home Secretary
on that before and I do so now.
Q587 Mr Singh: Mr Letwin, are you
concerned by Treasury proposals to cut further our static defences
in terms of uniformed immigration and customs officers and replace
them with intelligence-led mobile teams? Does that cause you any
concern?
Mr Letwin: Yes, it does, and I
regret to say I had not become aware of this. I shall now profit
from this encounter by going away and investigating.
Q588 David Winnick: Mr Singh has
helped you in your research. Mr Letwin, can I, on behalf of the
Committee, thank you very much for coming along. Obviously, the
subject itself is a topic of great controversy but you have given
us a good deal to think about and, no doubt, we shall do so with
all the other evidence, both oral and written, which has been
presented to us. Thank you very much.
Mr Letwin: I feel thoroughly grilled.
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